What was Rabbit?
Rabbit was the baby of Hutchison Whampoa (who later went on to create Orange), and was a CT2 digital cordless phone system which replaced the insecure and out of date CT1 system. 4 companies were given licences to run a national CT2 network :- Hutchison Whampoa (Rabbit), Phonepoint, Mercury Callpoint and Zonephone. The idea was a digital cordless phone that you could use at home, in the office or on the move.
How did it work?
Basically, you could only make calls when “out and about” and then you had to be next to or within 100m of a Rabbit point. I seem to recall customers carrying pagers so that they could be paged with details of someone who wanted to contact them. All you had to do then, was to find a point in which to make the call!
The points were situtated in “popular places” such as banks, railway stations, shopping centres or where there would be a large amount of people and a need for points. In fact I can remember taking over my very first branch, when working in mobile comms, and having a Rabbit point in the shop (not that many people were ever seen using their phones though!)
Where is it now?
Sadly, Rabbit came to its demise circa 1993/1994. Although it worked extremely well in Hong Kong, it didn’t quite take off over here and rather than throw good money at bad Hutchison decided to withdraw it.
Although the system was withdrawn, there are still many people using Rabbit phones as ordinary domestic cordless phones, with the base station and one or more handsets used around the house.
Again I can remember the days when my then boss decided to buy a load of Rabbits, and sell then for £199.99 inc VAT. They sold like hot cakes!
Memories of Rabbit
- Taking over my first mobile phone store wondering “what the hell is this Rabbit thing anyway!?
- Customers coming in and asking for replacement batteries (we never sold them but had lots of customers!)
- Coming in one day and finding the point had gone :’-(
- Selling the handsets for £199.99
- Saying at the launch of Orange “Bet it’ll be as popular as Rabbit!”
- Being told of a Rabbit point still in place – and sure enough it still is!
Hi Guys,
I have read your page on Rabbit which is of interest to me as an Orange PCS employee.
Anyway, on my way to work in Central London I noticed a Rabbit transmitter located on the underside of a roofing fascia panel on a platform building at New Barnet station in North London.
Keep up the good work!
Mark Foster
[...] more about Rabbit go here (we wrote [...]
Hi guys,
I’m trying to track down a manual for the CT2 home system, as I’ve just bought some for the house. They’re well better than these new DECT things! ;-)
Anybody got any pointers out there on the net?
Cheers,
My overiding memory is how much cash was burned on promotion.
The cuddly rabbit handpuppet (with waistcoat) went into the wheelybin years ago, but I’ve still got a couple of the embossed road atlas’!